Colin Wilson was one of the greatest writers in the esoteric field, and his books have served as a crucial introduction to various subjects for many of us. He was an undoubted expert. But he was also a generous supporter and consequently wrote a staggering 180 introductions, forewords, prefaces and afterwords to other people’s books. He rarely said no to anybody. In these works, he wasn’t interested in fulfilling a contractual obligation but wanted instead to convey his excitement and enthusiasm for the accompanying text. Here are 17 of his best pieces, chosen by Wilson expert Colin Stanley, and in them, you can read his best thoughts on magic, witchcraft, exorcism, ghosts, poltergeists, the Loch Ness Monster, the afterlife, dowsing and much more. It’s a really interesting greatest hits. ~ Cygnus Magazine, Review

Introducing the Occult: Selected Introductions, Prefaces, Forewords and Afterwords of Colin Wilson brings together 17 of his best published introductions chosen by his bibliographer Colin Stanley. Within these covers you can read Colin Wilson on magic, witchcraft, exorcism, ghosts, poltergeists, the Loch Ness Monster, the afterlife, dowsing and much more. One of the most exciting, readable and wholly embraceable non-fiction authors of the 20th Century, Colin Wilson was easy able to write distinctly unique prose on true crime, mysticism and the paranormal, which is why this collection of his best, and notably some of his lesser known pieces on the Occult is a pure, unadulterated, and majestically scattered work of collective literary art. Throughout his career, because he wrote so widely on so many differing, all be they interconnected at times subject, he eventually ended up writing more than a hundred books. In fact, Wilson himself once called his philosophy new existentialism or phenomenological existentialism, and maintained his life work was that of a philosopher, and (his) purpose to create a new and optimistic existentialism. In short, Introducing the Occult offers up an accessible guide to what has sometimes gotten itself a bad rap, whilst at the same time still today resides under the shadowy and relatively obscure cloud we know as Occultism. Chock full of wide-ranging facts and esoteric wisdom, freelancer Colin Stanley has done a simply wondrous job in culling all these prose together under the one roof, and thus allowing even the most sedately curious looky loo to, perhaps, become a little more interested with each and every page turn. FULL REVIEW: https://annecarlini.com/ex_books.php?id=411 ~ Exclusive Magazine, Review

Historically, the occult field seems to have been made up of three kinds of people: those with an impartial intellectual interest, those seeking a way of increasing personal power, and those wishing to penetrate ‘divine mysteries’ and arrive at profound wisdom and understanding. It’s possible that one could embrace all three approaches at the same time, although dedication to the effort of attaining wisdom and self-realisation might well override the other two endeavours. Perspicaciously, the philosopher, novelist and critic Colin Wilson (1931–2013), doubtless falling into the first of those categories above, addresses facets of all three, in one way or another, in an agreeable and informative selection of his writings from 1972–1989 which followed on the heels of publication in 1971 of one of his major works, The Occult. Introducing the Occult: Selected introductions, prefaces, forewords and afterwords by Colin Wilson (Axis Mundi Books, December 2022) is selected, edited and introduced by Wilson’s esteemed bibliographer Colin Stanley, and reflects how Wilson became sought after for such commentaries by genre writers after The Occult had become a best-seller. Being of particular interest to readers of Wilson who are already familiar with his prolific oeuvre, the selection comprises seventeen pieces on subjects ranging across ghosts, poltergeists, the afterlife, exorcism, dowsing, witchcraft and magic, indicating the wide variety and proliferation of occult thinking going on at the time and which Wilson was following. It provides further insight into his explorations and reading in those years, and supplies strong evidence of the openness of his mind and the breadth of his constructive speculation, although one has to say that his references are now largely outdated. A follow-up post-2000 selection of such writings by Wilson would be welcome — in his indispensable Post-Ultimate Colin Wilson Bibliography 1956–2020, Colin Stanley lists more than 40 introductions, forewords and afterwords written by Wilson in this later period. Altogether, Wilson wrote more than 180 introductions, forewords, prefaces and afterwords to other authors’ books — including an introduction to one of mine, I’m pleased to say — and often, as Colin Stanley says, these contributions were significant and substantial essays in their own right. They also remain testament to Wilson’s particular approachability and generosity towards new and aspiring writers, exemplified here by Nevill Drury, Steven Skinner, David Conway and Paul Broadhurst who all went on to wider acclaim. Wilson always thought of his investigations of the occult as a natural adjunct to his ‘new existentialism’, or ‘philosophy of intuition’, which initiated a quest for a logical way of investigating mental states beyond everyday consciousness, including paranormal experience, as a means of contributing to a sense of purpose and an authenticity of living which would assist human evolution. In his introduction to Healing Energy, Prayer and Relaxation by Dr Israel Regardie (1982), Wilson writes: ‘Magic is first of all an attempt to achieve some kind of control over that inner world of intuition.’ The whole practice of magic, it seems to me, really comes down to the enlisting of the powers of that inner world, of the linking of the unconscious to the conscious mind. View of the universe Wilson’s remarkable prescience in so many matters philosophical and cultural is instanced in his introduction to The Goblin Universe by Ted Holiday (1986). Here Wilson writes: ‘… our whole view of the universe is undergoing a change as radical as the change from medieval cosmology to that of quantum physics, and that when this change is complete, we shall see that the new cosmology is not less but more “scientific” than the old one … this new cosmology only amounts to a recognition that the mind plays a far more active place in the universe than the scholastic philosophers supposed.’ (Wilson’s italics). At the time Wilson wrote this, he was already a pioneer in consciousness studies, although the body of inquiry didn’t acquire that name until the mid-1990s when it was emerging as an interdisciplinary pursuit that was to embrace many of the subject areas Wilson had been discussing for years: philosophy, psychology, physics, religion, neuroscience, biology, anthropology and art, for example. By the early twenty-first century, the question of the nature of mind and consciousness was being described as the greatest unsolved issue in science, but the reductive physicalist approach, to which Wilson was opposed, as is evidenced further by Introducing the Occult, has continued to lose ground to new and cogent post-materialist metaphysical theory. After The Occult, Wilson went on to write two more substantial volumes on the subject, Mysteries (1978) and Beyond the Occult (1988), his ‘Occult Trilogy’, now acknowledged as a series of classics in the field. ~ Geoff Ward, Medium.com

Colin Wilson was the most exciting and readable non-fiction author of the 20th century, whose mind was so wide-ranging that he was equally at home in philosophy, criminology and parapsychology. This is an essential collection of some of his lesser known writings, all of which display his remarkable gifts as a writer and thinker. ~ Steve Taylor PhD, author of 'The Leap' and 'Spiritual Science'.

Colin Wilson was one of the most generous of writers, and by this I don't mean his prolific output, but the amount of time and effort he devoted to promoting the work of others. That largesse is well in evidence in this collection of Wilson's introductions to some of the many works on the supernatural and esoteric that came in the wake of his classic on the subject, 'The Occult', brought together by his friend and bibliographer, Colin Stanley. Readers of 'Mysteries', 'Beyond the Occult', 'Poltergeist!', 'Afterlife' and Wilson's other works about the frontiers of consciousness, will be delighted to find a batch of significant essays on a number of subjects, that might otherwise be unavailable to them. And if they haven't already, they might also be led back to the books themselves. I know it was practically always the case that if Wilson gave a book his imprimatur, it was worth reading. It goes without saying that this collection is too. ~ Gary Lachman, author of 'Beyond the Robot: the life and work of Colin Wilson'

'Introducing the Occult' is a treasure trove for those interested in esoteric wisdom.. Colin Wilson helped introduce hundreds of authors’ books to the world, and in each essay or introduction, he honed his own philosophy and expanded on his extraordinary insights into human consciousness. This book, like the celebrated 'The Occult', offers an accessible and highly readable guide to the sometimes shadowy and obscure world of occultism. Colin Stanley, Wilson’s indefatigable bibliographer, has done us all a favour by gathering these wide-ranging and life-changing insights together all in one volume. ~ David Moore, author of 'Evolutionary Metaphors: UFOs, New Existentialism and the Future Paradigm'